Dual-core Atom 330 tested

Index

We used lamemt and in case of the Atom 330 a 720p movie. A normal resolution movie will yield the same results as with the N270.

Atom 330 is doing well despite the fact the Northbridge/Southbridge is taking about 25W.

Conclusion:

Again, we tested if the new Atom 330 can play 720p stuff, at least when it plays from the hard drive. Atom 330 doesn't have any problems to play 720P and we suspect it can do 1080p. It's recommended to use ffdshow with classic media player to do so, because it utilizes dual cores and is much more efficient compared to any Microsoft or Apple codec. You can find the latest version here: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173941

To do a screenshot of a player you need to render with DX9 renderer, but DX output is much more CPU-intensive. If you have problems with playback we suggest you set your player to "overlay mixer".

Atom 330 is a good step forward. It will do all your office work, you can surf the Internet and even play HD content as long as you don't try that with a Blu-ray drive. The Northbridge/Southbridge combination is still disappointing. The Intel board, in particular, is quite boring and Intel has limited the feature-set to an absolute minimum. Besides that, the northbridge cooler makes working in a quiet environment impossible. There is some hope, because other vendors will do better boards and at least give us a proper DVI connector and a passively solution. You can clearly see that Intel's board around Atom 330 was the way to save as much money as possible.

The board with the CPU soldered is available for under €67,- which is quite cheap for a board with CPU.